Daily DigVid Review: Yahoo! Tries Distraction
Lots of news from Yahoo! today, which allows all of us to write about the company without mentioning the M word once.
Yahoo! and Turner Sports today unveiled an online content and advertising alliance, as reported by Glen Dickson on B&C’s home page.
According to the deal, Turner Sports will sell the advertising for the NBA, golf and NASCAR pages on Yahoo! Sports. In return, Yahoo! Sports will gain access to content on NBA.com, PGATOUR.com, PGA.com and NASCAR.com, all of which are league sites managed by Turner. One big advantage of the deal is that Turner will get access to Yahoo! technology that allows Turner to precisely target advertising based on consumers’ affinity for these various interests.
This deal is similar to one Yahoo! cut with CNET back in April. According to Yahoo!’s release: “opening the marketplace for Turner to sell advertising on Yahoo! Sports is part of a new publisher strategy that Yahoo! began implementing in October 2007. The company’s goal is to work with publishers that are differentiated in their markets online to build an interdependent reseller network. Through this reseller network, advertisers can reach the audiences they want to communicate with at Yahoo!’s unmatched scale, [while] presenting their audiences with relevant messages at the right time.”
There’s lots of coverage of this release but not too much commentary. Not sure people cared enough to really think much about it. One note by Sillicon Valley Insider: this deal is not exclusive. Although Yahoo! cut this first sports-content deal with Turner, it doesn’t mean that Turner corporate cousin AOL is cut out of the mix.
In other Yahoo!-related news, Yahoo! opened up its search-engine technology in an effort it is calling BOSS or Build Your Own Search Service. The idea is to let third party developers tinker with the technology, build search engines around it, and then allow Yahoo!-sold advertising into their results. Yahoo! hopes this will help it discover innovative new ways to search the Internet, while expanding its advertising reach and revenue. Over at All Things D, Kara Swisher thinks it’s a great idea, while John
Finally, Yahoo! Games will offer more than 400 downloadable ad-supported games by the end of the year.
OK, enough Yahoo! for today. Let’s talk about something else I’m rapidly becoming extremely tired of: the iPhone. The iPhone 3G becomes available tomorrow and apparently everyone is losing their minds over it. I would be too if I didn’t just buy a Blackberry in December and wasn’t sworn to Sprint for the rest of my life.
Anyway, now that Apple’s gotten a clue and opened up the platform a bit, content providers are lining up with applications. BravoTV.com today announced its iPhone-optimized Top Chef recipe finder located at iphone.bravotv.com, which is essentially a WAP site for iPhones. Top Chef already offers such a site for other mobile devices. This could be an extremely handy application for all you aspiring gourmets.
And CBS will team with its new acquisition, CNET, to cover tomorrow’s expected iPhone frenzy,stationing CBS Tech Correspondent Daniel Sieberg at the Fifth Avenue Apple Store to cover the madness starting at 7:30 a.m. (Lucky Daniel. I hope he gets an iPhone out of the deal.) Back at the Early Show, CNET’s Natali Del Conte will take a look at what other mobile devices are out there besides the iPhone (there’s something else?). Once the Early Show signs off, Seiberg and Del Conte will continue their coverage all day long, with footage posted on CNET. Finally, Brian Cooley and Tom Merritt will host a special edition of CNET Live from CNET’s San Francisco studio.
Yesterday, I was all excited about the new Office webisodes. Today, it’s Heroes, which I really hope will return to first-season form when Heroes: Villains comes back September 22. Heroes’ Web series, Going Postal, premieres Monday, July 14th at 3 pm ET on NBC.com, with more episodes coming out the following two Mondays. The Web series introduces a new character, postman Echo DeMille, who’s going to make some serious noise. Nissan and Sprint are sponsors.
P.S. If you want to rewatch season two in prep for season three, all the episodes are up at NBC.com for a limited time only.